Every year, college students spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks. The process of searching for the correct edition of a book and purchasing it at the lowest price is often a time consuming and difficult task that students dread. However, a recent graduate of Harvey Mudd College has created a web site—www.SwoopThat.com—that will not only change the way students view this tedious process, but will also improve the quality of Scripps College parties.

When students at the Claremont Colleges use SwoopThat to purchase textbooks, they are provided with course listings for the upcoming semester and the assigned textbooks for each class. After selecting a specific class, students are provided with an extensive free price comparison of all of the available copies of that book available for purchase online. The site is partnered with almost every major online bookseller, enabling students to find the lowest prices and save up to 75 percent on textbooks. In addition, when students purchase textbooks through SwoopThat, the Associated Student Government receives 2.5 percent cash back on the total sales revenue. In the case of Scripps College, the cash back generated from sales revenue becomes non-designated funds for SAS. This means that the money collected from these purchases have no restrictions.

According to Marta Bean, Scripps College 5C Events Chair, “SAS cannot [currently] buy alcohol using funds from student fees because some of these fees come from federal financial aid. We currently need to go through CMC for reimbursements, trading invoices with them. This sometimes costs us extra money. This also means that SAS members need to pay out of pocket for kegs, which is no fun because sometimes it takes a while to get reimbursed. With the money that we get from SwoopThat purchases, we have unrestricted funds that can go toward alcohol for senior brunch as well as 5C events.”

Because of this agreement with SwoopThat, SAS is encouraging all current Scripps College Students, as well as the incoming class of 2015, to take advantage of this opportunity to save generous amounts of money and help make us less reliant on CMC and more financially independent. Not only does this website help students save money, it supports the student government and allows more flexibility in party planning. So, next August when you are scrambling to find textbooks, why not pay www.SwoopThat.com a visit? SAS—and your wallet--will thank you!